Grace-Marie Turner has been at the forefront of the health-care reform debate for years, as the founder of the Galen Institute, a Beltway-area public-policy institute dedicated to health-care policy. She has been an opponent of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, in no small part having taken Catholic social thought into consideration.

She has spoken at the Gregorian University in Rome and co-authored Why ObamaCare Is Wrong for America.

Turner spoke with Kathryn Jean Lopez for the Register about why the Department of Health and Human Services’ coercive mandate is about the law itself — as the Supreme Court prepares to consider an attorneys general challenge to the law. The court will hear oral arguments the week of March 26, in cases challenging the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion provision.

What is your honest reaction to this “Where are the women?” argument in recent days? As I recall, you’ve been a pretty prominent opponent of the president’s health-care law itself, never mind the HHS mandate.

Two women legislators walked out of a House hearing on Feb. 16 asking, “Where are the women?” and quickly commanded national attention for what was little more than a political stunt.

Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., had called a hearing entitled “Separation of Church and State: Has the Obama Administration Trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?” The first panel of his Oversight Committee hearing was comprised of distinguished scholars, including Bishop William Lori, chairman of the Committee for Religious Liberty at the bishops’ conference, and four other religious scholars of similar distinction — all men.

The hearing clearly was called to explore the constitutional question of religious liberty. But Reps. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., stormed out because a college student was not invited to join the panel to talk about a friend’s difficulties in getting contraceptives. Chairman Issa said that Sandra Fluke, a law student from Georgetown University, was rejected because she was “not found to be appropriate or qualified” to testify about religious liberty.

News reports focused not on the substance of the hearing, but on the optics. The Democrats’ proposed witness was completely irrelevant to the panel; liberty, not contraception, was the topic. The reaction by the media and the Democrats was a base expression of gender politics. The fact that the second panel had two women as witnesses became irrelevant.

Has this women’s health stuff gotten out of hand?

This debate absolutely is getting out of hand, and people are confused by the complexity of what is really going on. The issue is not about women’s health. Walmart sells birth-control pills for just $9 a month. How on earth is that a crisis that deserves this kind of attention?

I have to think that the White House knew exactly what it was doing when it mandated that virtually all employers, including Catholic and other religious institutions, would be forced to pay for free preventive services, including sterilization, contraceptives and drugs that cause abortion. The White House wanted to confuse women into thinking that Republicans want to ban contraceptives when that absolutely isn’t the case.

Has this mandate stuff gotten out of hand?

It is hard for me to believe that the administration anticipated the uproar that it has created. In addition to the forceful opposition of the Catholic bishops, more than 2,500 pastors and evangelical leaders have signed a letter to President Obama asking him to reverse the mandate.

While most Protestants don’t oppose contraception, they do oppose the Obama administration’s requirement that religiously affiliated organizations are forced to provide and pay for services and products to which they have a strong religious objection. The letter calls the mandate a violation of religious freedom. This has become a serious and consequential constitutional question about the meaning of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty.

Is the mandate instructive about Obamacare itself?

Yes — all of this is rooted in Obamacare. It is clear evidence that when the government takes over control of our health-care system it also takes control over our most private health-care decisions. The government has decided that all women should have free birth control and pay nothing if they want drugs that cause abortion or decide to have their tubes tied. The Catholic Church and many other religious organizations simply cannot comply with the administration’s mandate. So this truly is a “stand down.” The Constitution’s protection of religious liberty is unquestionably being violated by the Obama administration’s mandate, and it will either be resolved in court or at the ballot box — or both.

Are we losing some sense of the dignity of the human person in all of this?

Obamacare is quickly moving us toward a socialist model of health-care payment and delivery where government, not doctors and patients, make decisions about our lives. The 2,800 pages of legislation and 10,000 pages of rules that already have been issued display a massive violation of the concept of subsidiarity. To preserve our dignity as free individuals conceived in the image of God, we are called to love and care for one another and to make decisions that express our faith and dignity. That is impossible when decisions as basic as life and death are being made for us by the state based upon what it considers is best for the collective good. The dignity of the individual is crushed in such a system.

The common good is achieved by a society in which individuals are responsible beings in a moral society that embraces the truth about our humanity. This responsibility extends to ourselves, our families and our communities and our expression of our love for each other through charity.

Obamacare’s expansion of the welfare state leads people to believe that someone else, and not they themselves, are responsible for their livelihood, their families, and their health. But this is contrary to the teachings of the Church. To quote Pope John Paul II: “Not only the world, however, but also man himself has been entrusted to his own care and responsibility. God left man ‘in the power of his own counsel’ (Sirach 15:14), that he might seek his Creator and freely attain perfection. Attaining such perfection means personally building up that perfection in himself.”

There is no place for this teaching in Obamacare.

Do we do it a disservice when we call it Obamacare, making it sound so partisan, when it really should be a step too far for anyone who isn’t a socialist? And I still assume, perhaps naively, most Americans are not socialists?

The president has been asked numerous times if he considers “Obamacare” to be a derogative term. Rather than rejecting the term, he appears to embrace it, saying in one interview that it is fine with him if people want to say “Obamacare.”

But his hubris is misplaced. The machinery of the bureaucracy is churning madly to issue as many rules and regulations as possible this year to lock Obamacare in place and make it more and more difficult to repeal the socialistic law that deprives us of our liberty — a law that will turn us into subjects rather than citizens.

Some on the “left” are taking this renewed focused on health-care policy to say, “We told you so,” a single-payer option would have been better. Why isn’t the single-payer option better?

Obamacare will quickly take us to the single-payer health system that then-Senator Obama said he prefers. Private insurance companies are pulling out of states across the country, depriving people of the coverage they have and prefer. Health insurance agents are being forced to find other ways to make a living, as new regulations from Washington are strangling their businesses. Long-established Catholic hospitals, including chains in Pennsylvania and California, are being sold to for-profit, secular chains. And tens of millions of people who get good private health insurance through their jobs will soon be shoved into government-run health systems where the government will tell them what insurance and health services they can and cannot have.

We are well on our way to President Obama’s single-payer health-care system that the American people so vociferously reject.

If you could have 10 minutes with the Supreme Court, what would you urge justices to bear in mind before they rule on the case they are taking up regarding the health-care law?

This is about so much more than health care. This is the battle for liberty of our time. Former Attorney General Ed Meese said recently that the court’s decision will be “the most important in 100 years.” Either we will turn one-sixth of our economy into a centralized system controlled by elite policymakers or we will return to freedom. The Commerce Clause of the Constitution has been stretched to limits unimagined by the Founding Fathers. This is the time for the court to say, “Stop!” The Constitution’s protection of our lives and liberty means what it says, and declaring the health law unconstitutional and stopping its limitless government control over our lives will begin to return our country to the path to liberty and prosperity. With its decision on Obamacare, the court will determine not only the future of health care in America, but whether or not we will live in a free country.

How might you seek to persuade “social justice” advocates to reconsider the individual mandate and this whole top-down approach to reform? Is there common ground to be found?

There are much better ways to get to the goal of health insurance for everyone than Obamacare. The health law will actually leave at least 23 million people without health insurance, and probably tens of millions more, and it will force nearly one in four Americans into the worst health-care program in the country: Medicaid. People will literally die waiting to see a physician.

We can build in changes to our health-care system that are much more compatible with our overall economy and that would achieve its goals at a much lower cost, with much better quality of care. For example, we could rearrange the tax and other subsidies already in place to provide more help for those at the lower end of the income scale. They could choose the private insurance that works for them and their families. But if people don’t buy coverage, then the money could be used to automatically enroll them in a private plan that would cover their major medical bills. Properly structured incentives would be more effective than a mandate in expanding access to health insurance. And preserving freedom to choose policies in a competitive marketplace will assure that patients, not government, are at the center.

I’ve been heartened to see Congressman Paul Ryan taking Catholic social teaching seriously when it comes to the budget and entitlement reform. There should be a similar engagement to health-care policy, shouldn’t there?

Representative Ryan is indeed a powerful leader in helping people understand the moral imperative of entitlement reform. We have been working for years with faith-based groups who understand the importance of health-care freedom as a religious issue. This controversy over the Obamacare mandate has made it abundantly clear to them that this is a fundamentally important constitutional question. And thank heaven for Paul Ryan and his leadership. He not only understands the moral imperative for change, but he has the road map to get us back on the right path.

Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a nationally syndicated columnist.

Comments

1) forced to pay for something people don’t believe in
2) that thing we don’t believe in isn’t a need in order to survive

Sex is not a need, it is a want and a privilege. The pill is also not a need, and when it is needed (i.e. for non-contraceptive reasons) the Church does not forbit its use.

Posted by Turner on Friday, Mar 9, 2012 12:54 AM (EDT):

No you are WRONG Mzz “libfreak48”
Mrs. Turner KNOWS that what the Catholic church supports is REAL health care reform NOT the poison pill MONSTROSITY that is “Obamacare”.

Mrs. Turner KNOWS that what all of the Popes have always taught is that every believer has a special obligation to practice TRUE Christian Charity.

NONE have ever taught that there is ONE and only ONE way to fulfill this duty of Charity. NONE would contenance this “UNHEALTHY” CARE BILL - this MONSTROSITY spawned in the dark called “Obamacare” that mandates that all citizens burn incense before the new “Baal” and bow to the State and subsidize the murder of both young and old.

Only at Georgetown or Notre Dame would one have been over educated into the imbecellity the induced ignorance to pretend to say that the “ONE” with his “ONE-BILL” ... the ONE RING TO RULE THEM ALL ... this Abortion of a Bill is a “fundamental human right”.

Posted by libfreak48 on Thursday, Mar 8, 2012 5:50 PM (EDT):

Ms. Turner DOES know that her church - the Catholic church - supports the health care reform law and teaches - via this Pope as well as the Pope before him - that health care is a fundamental human right, doesn’t she?

Posted by Bob Rowland on Thursday, Mar 8, 2012 5:12 PM (EDT):

If the Catholics that voted Obama in are still concerned about salvation I suggest they correct their mistake by voting him out.

Posted by Maryanne on Thursday, Mar 8, 2012 2:47 PM (EDT):

Yet another windfall for the insurance companies, which, by the way are currently determining what health care you get. They “ration” care every day, deciding how much, or even, IF they will pay for your care, simply to keep their profit margins up. Talk about a healthcare monopoly. Insurers set the prices and everyone must pay, or be fined. It’s win/win for them every time.
We do need equitable health care, but not at the expense of Religious Liberty. The HHS mandate is wrong and needs to be repealed. However, our healthcare system is badly in need of an overhaul, one that does not benefit the insurance companies at every turn. Profits should never be put before people’s lives.

Posted by Hanna Klaus on Thursday, Mar 8, 2012 2:21 PM (EDT):

Not to distract from the main point of the violation of freedom of conscience, but to second Dominicanis in forming a long term strategy, our experience with teaching teens to understand and value their sexuality AND fertility with the Teen STAR program has demonstrated support for remaining, or returning to chastity. While fighting the legal battles, let us begin to educate our youth. Then they will not need to use drugs or devices to remove their normal fertility from their bodies. Fertility is not a disease. Why the Institute of Medicine only recommended commodities to suppress normal functions rather than making choices based on knowledge makes one wonder if they don’t think humans can make free choices.

Posted by Rosemary on Thursday, Mar 8, 2012 1:59 PM (EDT):

I believe that this mandate is only the tip of the iceberg. This mandate is a red, or should I say, herring. While we are all debating this issue, I believe President Obama is trying to get people to forget about the economy & the largest debt in our history. He wants people to focus on this issue, the supposed war on women & forget about his other failings as president. He is trying to destroy the Constitution piece by piece. Just look at what is happening with First Amendment. Right now there is bill concerning the right of people to assemble in front of various government buildings i order to peaceably protest. This is just another outrage against our liberties. The Second Amendment is also under attack. Obama is trying to take our liberties. DO NOT LET HIM SUCCEED!

Posted by Vance on Thursday, Mar 8, 2012 1:48 PM (EDT):

Inspite of Cardinal Dolan’s efforts the balk of the body of Catholic Bishops remain silent. The Bishop of my dioceses has been stone silent on this issue. Their silence is what gives our diabolic enemies of the church much encouragement. It is this silence that has brought us to where we are today. The faithful do not hear anything about abortion, birth control, or euthanasia from the pulpit. Many are lead to believe that birth control is OK. The only thing we hear is that we faithful need to be tolerant of homosexuals. The Church leadership has been quite pathetic.

Posted by Maggie on Thursday, Mar 8, 2012 1:08 PM (EDT):

Has anybody brought up the laws passed to try and eliminate monopolies? Obamacare is the government trying to force a monopoly upon us and therefore goes against preexisting laws that are already in place. This means that Obamacare is not only against the constitution and our God given rights of self determination but it is also illegal in that it creates a monopoly in the healthcare.

Posted by Dominicanis on Thursday, Mar 8, 2012 11:34 AM (EDT):

Our situation is truly frightening. As a counselor at a pro-life pregnancy center, I see women who are being coerced into having abortions, by boyfriends/husbands, parents, and social workers. This coercion is couched in terms of ‘it’s your only choice’, ‘your life/health will be ruined’, ‘you can’t afford a baby’, etc. Obamacare will further strengthen this coercive impulse - hey, it’s all ‘free!’
.
Many poor women are captured early, at puberty, by PP and other ‘womens’ health’ organizations, and put on birth control pills, to be chemically neutered. Because many of these girls never learn or understand about their natural body rhythms, and have become sexually active without any concern for the natural result of sexual activity - pregnancy - they go off the pill for some reason, then end up pregnant within a few months. After that, they are given contraceptive implants, (because they are perceived as incapable of managing their bodies/fertility). The implants or IUDs often cause uncomfortable or painful side effects and the women want them out. When they get that monkey off their backs, they get pregnant again.
.
How the government treats poor women indoctrinated by the ‘culture of death’ is reprehensible, and Obamacare will be an instrument of this force. Obamacare is a poisonous miasma that will further debase and destroy our freedom. We MUST get rid of it.

Posted by Francis Ruffing on Thursday, Mar 8, 2012 11:24 AM (EDT):

I am concerned that the Bishops still don’t get it. What has happened with the “mandate” is what was inevitable. It was predictable and was predicted by those of us who think the Bishops were and are wrong to support nationalized health care. And if history and experience are not enough to convince all that this would happen, certainly the set of folks who have pushed for national health care (can you say Democrats, Obama, Sebilius, Pelosi, Kennedy, Shaheen, Biden, etc) should have made clear the direction this would quickly move. This outcome has been predictable for 30 or more years.

Until the Bishops recognize this mistake, we probably will not get moral and workable health care. I suggest the Bishops think about how nationalized health care contradicts the principle of Subsidiarity.

It will probably take massive and extended (years and years) of active protests like the Civil Rights Movement to fix what we now suffer due in no small part to the Bishops blindness. Tough words, I know, but I am convinced those are the facts. Hopefully the Catholics people will stand with the Bishops are they are arrested and our property confiscated.

Posted by Peter Muth on Thursday, Mar 8, 2012 11:02 AM (EDT):

Are we perhaps a bit demagogical here: The word “socialist” is being bandied around in total ignorance of the meaning of the term; the specter of thousands of priests and nuns in jail is so much hogwash; and no one is talking about the state taking over our health care - we are talking about health insurance. If we do not remain intellectually honest in this discussion, should we wonder that nobody listens?

The current discussion about religious freedom is serious, and the Obama administration initially made a serious mistake that justified the Bishops’ firm reaction.

But the health insurance issue is complex than just a matter of religiuous conscience. Without a mandate, the current US health-care system will collapse. Just as you would not get away with insuring your car AFTER you had an accident, you should not get away with taking a chance on health and, when a major illness hits, asking taxpayers to pay for your emergency room treatment. All of the generous European government health insurance systems are predicated on everyone paying for it - young and old, healthy or sick, Catholic or heathen - through taxes, as in the UK, or insurance premiums as in Germany. Some payers never need to call on their insurance, just like some drivers or home owners pay premiums all their lives and never have a claim.

If that is accepted, then the question becomes: What should be covered? Coverage should be broad - if you want it. Cover for events with a strong moral dimension ought to be available on an opt-in basis, not by the institution, but by the individual, Catholic, Jewish or heathen. If a Catholic school district offers its employees health insurance, the package should exclude the morally objectionable items, but the individual employee should be able to opt in personally to be covered for those those very same items, making this a matter of the individual conscience, not one of compelling religiuous institutions to violate their collective consciences.

Let us all calm down and take in the fact that the US health care system will collapse and eventually be available for the very rich only. What is moral about that?

Posted by Patrick Morand on Thursday, Mar 8, 2012 10:02 AM (EDT):

I see the possibility of Catholic institutions simply deciding they can no longer provide health insurance for their employees, and compensate them to find their own. In this very instance, the sheer number of employees flooding the market will have no option other than the so-called “public option”, and the entire system will fracture. As in anything where the government wants to make a point, it picks out the biggest player in an industry and selects it for zealous compliance and prosecution. At that point, other in the industry (in this instance, maor employers) can do nothing but raise their hands in surrender, thereby assuring the public option as the ONLY option.

Posted by veritas on Wednesday, Mar 7, 2012 10:08 PM (EDT):

We have only seen the tip of the iceberg ... it will only get worse ... as that sterling “Catholic?” Nancy Pelosi famously said you will have to “wait and see” what is in the Bill. Some “6 trimesters” ago back in 2010, that astute hard working first class journalist Judie Brown correctly pointed out what was being cooked up by Obama, Sibelius, Pelosi etc :

“Despite all its empty, deceptive rhetoric about expanding health coverage to the poor, Planned Parenthood, in all its diabolic wisdom, realizes something most Americans don’t: If it succeeds in getting birth control on the list of preventive services in the health care reform law, not only will new health insurance plans be required to fully cover the cost, but state Medicaid programs will be required de facto to cover the full cost of even the most expensive, invasive forms of birth control, such as implants and IUDs, to millions of women with incomes well above poverty level, providing an instant pot of gold for the abortion and birth control mogul.”

Judie’s warning is now a reality ... Obama has managed in one stroke to do away with ALL existing Abortion and ALL Conscience limits for ALL ordinary Americans while fabricating yet another lucrative tit on the Big Government Sow for the Planned Parenthood monster ... PP will sup at this new tit because Omamacare is robbing the $$$$ from Medicare & Medicaid. PP will quickly assert their right’s and push the most $$$-EXPENSIVE-$$$ (and profitable), and the most invasive forms of birth control, such as implants and IUDs, for millions of women ... and Obamacare gets to force this business directly to favored PP Clinics.
Some well placed “Catholics” own a huge share of responsibility for this demonic development. The truly lackadaisical way that so many Diocesan Papers and the disingenuous way that so many so called “Catholic” Universities have treated “Social Justice” issues providing cover for these reprobate Politicians has blossomed and the cancer is fully metastasized.
Can anyone out there spell G-u-l-l-i-b-l-e? The Culture of Death has perfected Political “Chess” while so much of our “Catholic Intelligentsia” is either overtly a 5th column or still playing Political “Checkers”.
As far as genuine Health Care goes the twin principles of Subsidiarity and Morality direct all honest supporters of true Social Justice to fairly scream out “Vouchers” not bloated inefficient and Evil Obamacare.
No Compromise, No way, No How!

Posted by BOULETBOULET on Wednesday, Mar 7, 2012 7:38 PM (EDT):

The point of the HHS mandate has nothing to do with availability of contraception. I believe it to be a pre-meditated attempt to goad Catholic hospitals and other organizations into refusing to comply by closing our institutions. At that point, the Federal Government will use the eminent domain provisions of the U.S. Constitution - the last clause of the the Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights—to force the sale of Catholic institutions to the Government. The “takings” clause, as it is called, says that no private property is to be taken without “just” compensation; but, with liberal judges infiltrated throughout the Judiciary, who’s to argue with The Godfather Obama’s “offer we can’t refuse”? At that point, we Catholics will receive pennies on the dollar for being forced to sell the properties to the Government. The Government will solemnly proclaim that “the same people will work at these hospitals as yesterday; and the same patients will still receive the same care today, under Government ownership, as yesterday.” We will truly have stepped into the Orwellian world.

What I want to know is when I can expect to see a couple of thousand priests and nuns and brothers in jail—arrested for civil disobedience? My recommendation is, “the sooner, the better.” I recommend to Cardinal Dolan that he and 200 other bishops, along with a couple of thousand nuns and priests go “occupy the Supreme Court” building in Washington—NOW, in ADVANCE of the Court’s upcoming decision on Obamacare. GET ARRESTED. Let the namby-pamby Justice Kennedy know that we are COUNTING on him—finally—to stand up for the Catholic Faith, and for the Constitution!! PROTEST NOW!!! GET ARRESTED!! PUT PRESSURE ON THE COURT TODAY!! Do NOT wait passively, hoping that the Court “might” see “reason” and rule against Obamacare.

Posted by BOULETBOULET on Wednesday, Mar 7, 2012 7:38 PM (EDT):

The point of the HHS mandate has nothing to do with availability of contraception. I believe it to be a pre-meditated attempt to goad Catholic hospitals and other organizations into refusing to comply by closing our institutions. At that point, the Federal Government will use the eminent domain provisions of the U.S. Constitution - the last clause of the the Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights—to force the sale of Catholic institutions to the Government. The “takings” clause, as it is called, says that no private property is to be taken without “just” compensation; but, with liberal judges infiltrated throughout the Judiciary, who’s to argue with The Godfather Obama’s “offer we can’t refuse”? At that point, we Catholics will receive pennies on the dollar for being forced to sell the properties to the Government. The Government will solemnly proclaim that “the same people will work at these hospitals as yesterday; and the same patients will still receive the same care today, under Government ownership, as yesterday.” We will truly have stepped into the Orwellian world.

What I want to know is when I can expect to see a couple of thousand priests and nuns and brothers in jail—arrested for civil disobedience? My recommendation is, “the sooner, the better.” I recommend to Cardinal Dolan that he and 200 other bishops, along with a couple of thousand nuns and priests go “occupy the Supreme Court” building in Washington—NOW, in ADVANCE of the Court’s upcoming decision on Obamacare. GET ARRESTED. Let the namby-pamby Justice Kennedy know that we are COUNTING on him—finally—to stand up for the Catholic Faith, and for the Constitution!! PROTEST NOW!!! GET ARRESTED!! PUT PRESSURE ON THE COURT TODAY!! Do NOT wait passively, hoping that the Court “might” see “reason” and rule against Obamacare.

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